Fee-For-Services Testing

The Antenna Anechoic Chamber Laboratory is available for Fee-For-Services antenna radiation pattern, RF absorber, and S-parameter testing. Students also assist in test configuration development and parametric characterizations. Past projects include:

Chamber Development

The Antenna Anechoic Chamber Laboratory was developed on-campus to provide students entering the wireless area with a practical working knowledge of RF, microwave, and antenna systems. It also offers the local engineering community a low-cost option for wireless system qualification testing.

The new chamber is used to provide an opportunity to apply theoretical concepts presented in antennas and electromagnetics courses. Foundation courses in this area were traditionally taught as theoretical lectures. In keeping with Cal Poly's 'Learn By Doing' principle, a laboratory component--a series of experiments utilizing the chamber--is being developed. Antenna chamber utilization for radiation pattern measurements also supports future antenna research.

The chamber development itself served as two senior projects and six MS theses, as the project involved extensive planning and construction, RF material characterization, and calibration and operating procedure development.

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Current Equipment

Support for chamber development has been in the form of equipment and material donations from industry totaling over $100k. Donations have included over 300 panels of anechoic chamber absorber foam (both pyramid and wedge shape from Raytheon Systems Company), RF test equipment, antenna azimuthal positioners and controller instrumentation and software (Deskin Research Corp), and several pairs of standard gain horns spanning the range 1.7GHz to 26GHz (Deskin Research Corp, additional grants).

Through support from Cal Poly's C3RP program, a three-axis positioner and controller has been acquired from Sunol Sciences.

Equipment Needs

RF instrumentation including network and spectrum analyzers are currently being sought. To help support continued development of the Cal Poly EE Department Antenna Anechoic Chamber, please contact Dean Arakaki at darakaki@calpoly.edu.